Covid-19: Why businesses need to reinvent themselves
You will have to answer two questions in the coming weeks: how can I limit the impact on my business if such a crisis were to return next year? What opportunities for renewal has this global crisis created?
Very often in companies, or more generally in the French population, we observe a real reluctance to change.
We often hear:
"It's impossible, people will never accept that."
"It would be great, but we don't have the budgets or the time."
"It's a change of culture or habit too complicated."
Agility enables success
This crisis has the merit of showing us the opposite. On February 26, 2020, Ifop revealed the result of ahealth surveyshowing that one in three men did not wash their hands, especially after going to the toilet. In less than a month handwashing is now an obsession thanks to aggressive communication campaigns, which will permanently change the behavior of the French.
Further proof of our agility, when the marketing of a vaccine normally takes 3 years, it could be done this time in just one year. In the same register, the democratization of 3D printing in hospitals or the reorientation of certain production lines, demonstrate the adaptability of French companies. Finally, while at the state level, the economy has in modern history always been positioned as a priority, for the first time and on a global scale, the human being is the most important.
In 1969, the Hong Kong flu killed more than 30,000 people in France, one million worldwide. At the time, neither the media, nor the politicians nor the general public took the measure of the epidemic. Fifty years later, all countries affected by Covid-19 have been confined.
These examples prove a real paradigm shift. They confirm to large companies that agility and pragmatism, which make the success of start-ups that have become global giants, allow success where some are currently paralyzed in the face of the heaviness of their internal process.
How to react to the crisis we are going through? Here are a few tips.
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don't panic, keep a cool head and have good cash management. Far too many companies have a financial approach as usual. It is absolutely necessary to get out of an accounting vision and enter into a cash management vision in order to be able to estimate for how long a company is able to burn its funds.
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Close monitoring, pragmatic and collaborative with its customers and suppliers. It is absolutely necessary to get out of hierarchical mode.
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Ignore your cognitive biasesand its beliefs.
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Accept that you have no certaintyand that we know nothing.
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Work on multiple scenariosand update them regularly.
Which world do you want?
We regularly hear in the media that life before will probably not resume for a long time. In my opinion,we shouldn't ask ourselves when our life before will return but rather: do we really want to resume our existence where we left it on March 16?
In the newspapers, the testimonies of doubtful French follow one another. Whensome want to change jobs, companion or place of life, others wonder about thethe world after. What are we going to do with it?
For some companies teleworking was culturally impossible. It is obvious that some of your collaborators, even if they miss their office or their colleagues, will have taken a liking to it. Why not democratize it in the future ? This allows you in particular to reduce the office space available per employee within your buildings and consequently to reduce your structural costs. Above all, it allows you to gain in agility, employee satisfaction and therefore in performance.
We observe a considerable impact of this crisis on the environment. The containment of 3.5 billion people has improved air quality in highly polluted areas,make the Himalayas visible again in India, to allowwhales to approach as far as the creeks of Marseilleand this in less than a month… So many definitive proofs if needed, of the industrial impact of man on our environment.
As a business leader, or Business Unit manager or even as employees, the question is up to you to know which ecosystem you want to bequeath and build. This period of calm is a unique, rare moment that we all look for in a normal year. It's time to take a step back and ask yourself the right questions. Our employees are increasingly looking for meaning in their work. They are looking for companies that will allow them to respond to the fifth step of Maslow's pyramid : the need for self-fulfillment and the quest for meaning.
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Rethinking our values architecture
Globalization as we have known it until now has shown its limits, particularly in terms of the supply of raw materials and therefore the disruption of production or distribution chains. In the event of a pandemic or conflict, nations and companies will have to modify their cursor linked to offshoring and the architecture of their production chain. This will help redevelop a local or environmental economy.
In terms of business model, companies will have to rethink their value proposition. They will have to refocus on the most essential needs of their customers. The resilience generated by this crisis will surely have made your customers realize that mass consumption is something we can do without, in favor of local consumption. This will reposition your business by giving meaning and vision to its future. Companies will also have to rethink their value architecture. Which production line? Which supplier? These questions will have to be considered in an ecological context, a process of relocation and a consideration of the human being with the development of new working methods. Bringing these fundamental points into line will allow companies to establish a new profit equation, for a return to growth in line with the new global context.
However, the route cannot be frozen. The recovery is likely to be volatile and uneven. Accordingly, governments and businesses must develop a resilient and adaptive reopening strategy, allowing for adjustments as events unfold and new information emerges.
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